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“Drumming Preparation”: Poetics and Politics of Rhythm in the Soviet Avant-garde
The Cultural Revolution of the 1920s aimed at a radical transformation of all areas of life. Many artists and scientists saw a unifying force in rhythm: both physical movement and language, both routines of everyday life and celebrations and rituals were to be intensified through rhythmic training (conditioning, disciplining) and rhythmic enthusiasm (ecstasy, celebration). It is precisely the tension between these two tendencies, discipline and ecstasy, that is examined as the central tension in post-revolutionary rhythmic discourse - using the example of the theoretical writings of Sergei Eisenstein, the "rhythmistic" movement in dance and gymnastics, the "scientific organization of work", the theories of poetic rhythm (Andrej Bely and others).